Lieutenant Jennifer Richardson
Name Jennifer Suzanne Richardson M.D.
Position Chief Counselor
Second Position Diplomatic Attache
Rank Lieutenant
Character Information
| Gender | Female | |
| Species | Human | |
| Age | 37 |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 5'7 | |
| Weight | 142lbs | |
| Hair Color | Mousey Brown | |
| Eye Color | Brown | |
| Physical Description | Jennifer is not a person who overly cares about her appearance. She will pull her hair back into a ponytail rather then fuss and is as comfortable in jeans and shirt as she is in her uniform. Her hair reaches the middle of her back. When you look at her face, your eyes are instantly drawn to hers for their unusual colour and habit of portraying the emotions she tries to hide deep. Pale-skinned, her arms and face are scattered with freckles from time spent in the sun. |
Family
| Spouse | Captain David Richardson (deceased) | |
| Children | None | |
| Father | Neil Collins | |
| Mother | Barbara Collins (deceased) | |
| Brother(s) | None | |
| Sister(s) | None |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | In her personal life, Jennifer can keep to herself alot. She is in no way introverted, she would just prefer to sit in and read, or spend time dancing in a holodeck, rather then go out partying. If the situation calls for it, she will join a group of friends for a night out, but she wouldn't do this on a regular basis. In her business life, Jennifer is seen to be very approachable. She has a strong empathy with patients, whether it be a child with a bump or a grown adult missing a limb. She is encouraging to the people she is assigned to look after that should they feel the need, she is available to them 24/7, weather they require physical or mental Doctoring. Despite how she presents herself in personal or business life, Jennifer should never be underestimated. She does have a temper which is extremely rarely seen but when brought up, she can very easily let it be known that she is not happy. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | Amongst Jennifer's strengths, she counts her devotion to furthering of her knowledge as one of the strongest. This enables her to always be up to date with new treatments, medications and procedures so she can be fully able to decide on a course of treatment for her patients; in either a medical or a psychological sense. Her past has also taught her to always be strong and persevere no matter the situation she finds herself in. This could be situations in which she needed to empathise with patients who were struggling or even situations in which she maybe have been hurt and needed to bounce back. This has been most important to her in the loss of her husband. Jennifer’s key weakness is her temper. Known to flair when upset or hurt, it can take her a time to be able to get it back under control and 99% of the time she will feel guilty about what she perceives as a loss of control. |
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| Ambitions | With the move in responsibilities from medicine to psychology, Jennifer is focused on the helping of others. | |
| Hobbies & Interests | Reading, Swimming, Dancing, Horse Riding |
| Personal History | Born in 2339, it had always been her parents intention that she would be their only child. They were careful how they raised Jennifer, never spoiling her and raising her to know herself and to take nothing for granted. As the age of 12, Jennifer’s mother passed away after a very short battle with cancer. Having always been closest to her father growing up, her mother’s passing impacted her, but through the strength of having each other, both Jennifer and her father went on living as they knew Barbara would have wanted them to. Her father was a civilian Doctor, operating out of the local medical centre. Jennifer grew up surrounded by his patients. As she got older he used to gently encourage her to actively help with anything from administration to just learning the tools of his trade from a standard 21st-century stethoscope to the 24th century dermal regenerator. It was during this time that Jennifer realised she shared her Father’s devotion to the job he did but she wished to spread her wings, to go further afield. At the age of 22, Jennifer had finally decided that she wished to go down the route of Starfleet medical. The decision was hard come by as it was one of the hardest choices she would make in her life as it would take her away from her father but he couldn’t have been any more supportive in her decision. Neil wanted nothing more in life than to see his daughter spread her wings and see the universe. In 2361, Jennifer finally enrolled in Starfleet as a medical cadet, fully embracing the four years of education which came with it. She aced all courses, her medical background and age giving her a slight advantage over the other students; something which in normal situations may cause people to resent her but Jennifer’s personality drew people to her. She was also always willing to help others if they came to her with questions or she noticed somebody struggling whom she knew would welcome the help. Graduating with the rank of Ensign in 2365, Jennifer found herself facing a choice of what she would choose to do her internship in. The usual were thrown her way; paediatric, surgical, obstetrics all areas her lecturers were quick to point her towards but one area in particular grabbed her interest, combat medicine. She knew of the tactical operations division of security, you couldn’t be in Starfleet and not, and while she felt that she may not have the personality for it, working with these teams still appealed to her. The idea of working in a live setting, with ongoing unrest and battle being probable, stirred an excitement in her that she wished to try and grab with both hands. The placement would allow her to dip her toe into different aspects of medicine such as amputation, triage, emergency surgery, etc. Straight out of the academy, with the aid of her mentor, Doctor Fionnuala Gardiner (her lecturer in emergency medicine); Jennifer was placed in a camp on the war torn planet of Palora. Jennifer was to work under their chief medical officer Lieutenant Commander Jessica Field as a medical officer for two more years in order to fully qualify in emergency/triage/combat medicine. In 2367, two years into her placement, a group from starfleet security had been ambushed while out on a routine patrol in the local town of Medea. The six officers were all in a bad condition so medical was scrambled to save who they could. Jennifer herself was assigned to one Lieutenant JG David Richardson. His injuries meant that he had been left for dead. Shrapnel had embedded into his chest, lodging itself into the right ventricle of his heart. Every pump of his heart flooded his lungs with blood. The only reason he even made it to the surgical table was because the recovery team had ensured the shrapnel was not touched in anyway. On the table he flat-lined twice and each time the team tried to persuade Jennifer to back off but she refused to give up. She managed to stablise his heart until a transport could be arranged to the nearby Starbase 264 where the team took over and performed a cardiac replacement, replacing his human heart with a parthenogenic implant. Jennifer was part of the team that stayed by the injured side during transport. David was in and out of consciousness the whole time, his lung pressures low (causing his breathing to be erratic) because his heart struggled with each beat. Each time his would come around, it was Jennifer’s face that he saw. When they reached the base, Jennifer was given two days leave before she would be needed back. The medical staff of the base took over the care of David but they allowed her in to visit him after his operation. Still in those days after, the marine was weak but everytime he opened his eyes he looked for Jennifer and it was from that point that he knew she would eventually become his wife. Once back at base, Jennifer settled back into life; her thoughts sometimes turning to David but she tried to put him out of her mind as he was now gone. Transferred back to Earth for rehabilitation to get him back on his feet. She kept in touch with his progress, getting regular updates from the medical teams in Starfleet Medical. In between, she would sometimes get personal correspondence from him also; but still she tried to keep a distance, not wanting to get close because there would be no future. Towards the end of 2368, the correspondence stopped, causing Jennifer to feel like a gap had grown in her life. She tried to make enquiries to find out if something had happened but she was blocked because she wasn’t family nor wife. In 2369, Jennifer finished her internship, granting her the full title of Doctor and a promotion to Lieutenant J.G. During the promotion ceremony, a familiar face was in the crowd, David. He had managed to persuade Starfleet to send him back to to the camp on Palora. During the two years away he had gone through his rehabilitation and been assigned to the Starfleet Security Headquarters on Earth, helping to train in their new recruits. It was time for him to get back onto the frontline. Seeing David again brought back memories Jennifer had pushed back on. During those days when she had kept him alive, she had grown close to the man; a closeness she had forced herself to ignore because she realised a patient and Doctor could never be anything more. She had fooled herself into believing the visits she made were out of concern for a patient and not for someone she cared about. David and Jennifer grew closer with no barriers in their way until in 2371 David asked her to marry him. He confessed that before he had left Earth he had contacted her father and paid him a visit. He had explained to Neil about their past and told the man that he intended to ask Jennifer to marry him. Neil had given his blessing...something which sealed the deal for Jennifer. After all the time they had wasted, Jennifer and David were married within two months of the proposal by the base’s chaplain, Jennifer’s father joining them via a live comm-link as civilians weren’t allowed on base no matter the situation. The year after they were married, Jennifer gained promotion to Assistant Chief Medical Officer on the camp. Life was uncomplicated for them both over the next 3 years, as uncomplicated as it can get for an emergency medicine Doctor and security staff in a war zone.. Neither were pushed to start a family, they felt that the time wasn’t yet right and they would have their lives ahead of them. Their commitment to their jobs saw Jennifer promoted to Lieutenant in 2372 and David to squadron leader in the same year. One night in 2374, word came through that David was being redeployed to the USS Coventry. At this point hostilities in the regions were beginning to grow, and security staff were needed to build the Federation's defence lines in space. The USS Coventry formed part of an essential defence front that was important in the war against the Cardassians and Dominion. Communication between Jennifer and David was very fractured due to the nature of his deployment. She had no idea of where he was, but they both knew that with his career, this was always going to be a probability. News filtered through after a number of weeks of an attack on Beatzoid. Jennifer was deployed to the USS Nightingale as one of their Emergency Medical Physicians, her experience as assistant Chief seen as being important in helping set up emergency triages to begin to funnel through the injured. Jennifer was frantic on where David was and if he was caught up in the battle but she had to focus on the matters she was tasked with. As the travel days passed, news continued to filter through that the Federation had lost the battle in a matter of hours. There were mass casualties with many ships lost and their crew. Jennifer scanned and analysed every list of names and ships as they came through, between days spent setting up field medical and surgical structures and setting up make-shift morgues. As the USS Nightingale came into the Beta Zeta system, it had been 8 weeks since she had last heard from David. At the same time a ship came up on a list which sent a strike of fear through her body; the USS Coventry had been listed as destroyed with the loss of all hands on desk. Jennifer was trying to control her panic. Her mind wanted to go into shut down, believing that David must be dead but at the same time trying to cling to a small bit of hope as long as she didn’t see his name written. The Doctor threw herself into triaging, treatment and surgery while at every chance scanning the lists of names beginning to funnel through; the ships that had been lost and the crews recovered by those in retreat. More days passed, faces blurred into each other, surgery after surgery as her and her colleagues tried to save as many as they could. Work became a means of numbing the panic and pain; a focus as she still awaited word that maybe David wasn’t on the ship at it’s destruction. It felt like the stream of patients was never-ending. Coffee and cat naps was how Jennifer and her colleagues lived due to the short-staffed situation they experienced. The Federation was sending what medical personnel they could but their main focus was reinforcing the primary planets from near the Cardassians and Dominion would move again. The Federation needed their people patched and redeployed to what ships they could wrangle. At the start of shift; word came in of incoming injured who had been extracted from Beatzoid. Given the period that had passed since the battle and the fact that anyone caught on the ground would have been tracked and hunted; it was expected that the personnel would be both medically and mentally in the trenches. One name kept jumping out, Sudis Erris. In the recess of Jennifer’s brain; the name kept nagging at her as being familiar. Through the exhaustion and worry she carried she struggled to understand why. Accepting the patient, as soon as she saw the Bajorian d’ja page it came to her how his name had been mentioned by David as being his squadron leader. As Jennifer treated Sudis she came to learn that David had died on the Betazed planet; just a mere two weeks before him and the last of his team had been evacuated. Sudis himself had witnessed it and was clear; David was dead. Jennifer’s life fell apart. For weeks she'd hung to some hope that there was some chance David could still be alive but now she had witness proof that there was no possibility of him being alive. Sudis was able to give her David’s wedding band and comm badge; solid proof to compound the situation, but at the same time leave room for very little doubts that David had passed. As the feeling of there being nothing left threatened to overwhelm her, Jennifer did the only thing she could do: she threw herself into work. Amongst the patients she continued to treat, Sudis was still prominent. Her duty as a Doctor didn't allow her to transfer him to a colleague, and a part of her clung to the last link she had to David's final moments. Beneath the overwhelming grief and despair, if she treated Sudis she could give him a chance to return to his life where the same had been unfairly stripped from her and David. In amongst the chaos of frontline support, a memorial service was held for David. With no body, and no time to allow for family back on Earth to attend; Jennifer had only her husband’s surviving crew members and the few who had travelled on the Nightingale with her from Palora. The ship’s small chapel was made available for the service. A recognised space for patients of all religions, but at this time a place for the mourning to say goodbye. The atmosphere was tense, rushed and sombre. The stream of refugees and injured officers continued on board, the chaos of outside world revolved around outside of the closed doors where those who cared for David gathered. Jennifer’s memories of the service were fractured and scattered. She remembered some words spoken by others, even some spoken by herself, but the entirety of the time was handled on autopilot, an outwardly experience where the grief she felt threatened to overwhelm while her mind continued to persuade her that this all had to be a dream. In the days to come, the streams of injured began to lessen as the Federation made the decision to move out. It was decided that as many had been saved from the surface that could be and the Nightingale was needed elsewhere while the hostilities continued across the quadrant. Betazoid was lost but the war was still ongoing. At the same time, when it came time to discharge Sudis and his own redeployment, Jennifer felt like what stability she had left was falling apart. On those short days while Sudis was there, while patients funnelled in and the environment existed in chaos, it was easy not to focus on David being dead, instead to focus on the man she loved. A division in her own path had now come into focus: to continue in her career in Starfleet, where she could move back to the base she was stationed on, stay on the ship where she would continue to respond to frontline triage or go back to Earth. While it felt natural to pack up and run back to the comfort of her Dad, Jennifer couldn't help but turn to the rush of frontline support. The fast pace, the time not to think or be; it allowed her a chance to survive and not have to think. Over the next 6 months, a pattern developed: rescue, treat, offload, refresh and go again. The pattern suited Jennifer, who, at this time, lived to treat others, ignoring her own self-care. When the grief threatened to overwhelm her, when the memories of David became too much, it was easy to switch into Doctor mode and focus on controlling the health and lives of others. Colleagues became concerned as they noticed her losing weight; the evidence was clear of a lack of sleep. One day, after a 16-hour shift following the ship being overrun by more battle injuries, Jennifer collapsed in the triage area. Starfleet were forced to step in and place her on leave; her superiors recognising that Jennifer wouldn't stop unless forced to. She was ordered to return to Earth and see the counsellors in Starfleet Medical. Until such a time as they felt her ready to return, she was to be placed on indefinite leave. On her return to Earth, for the first time in 8 months Jennifer was forced to just stop and breathe. The overwhelming grief was given a space she had always used to force it back from. The realisation of how she had been running from acceptance that David was truly gone came to the forefront. Her father became the pinnacle figure in her recovery; he himself having also lost the love of his life too early. As part of her recovery, Jennifer was forced to analyze her reaction to the news David had died. Her instinct to bury herself in work until her body and mind could not just take any more. Jennifer began to understand the true importance of mental health and truly looking after yourself. She had seen it in her time as a Doctor, the damage the war was doing to people. The atrocities they were having to live through, the lives being lost on an inhumane level. As a means of coping, Jennifer returned to Starfleet Medical to begin training as a clinical counsellor. The training wouldn't just help her in understanding her own reactions and failures to implement proper coping mechanisms, but also provide her a means to further see how she could help others through counselling. As a side to the counselling, she also undertook modules in diplomacy. Wanting to better understand interspecies relationships and how things went right, and equally how things went wrong. How could you influence situations of first encounters to bring about outcomes that served the needs of everyone, and how could you also influence relationships that teetered on edges that would lead to repercussions that would affect so many more. In a way, this new course in her career helped her to feel closer to David; he gave his life fighting for the freedom of the people he served with in both the Federation and his own squadron. The counsellors worked with her on building coping mechanisms over the year; on being able to recall memories and sit with the thoughts of living without David at her side and avoid the spirals of before. Part of what also helped was the intermittent communications from Sudis. At the time of his leaving, she had asked him to stay in touch. Partly because, as his doctor, she wanted to see how his recovery went, but mostly he'd been a connection to David; the person there when his life was ended. Some part of her gained comfort in knowing David hadn't been alone, and she had Sudis to thank for that. After her year was up, Starfleet stepped forward with an offer to return to space. A position on the USS Venture which would allow her a position as Chief Counsellor while also helping command as the diplomatic attache. Although hesitant, Jennifer recognised the opportunity for what it was; a chance so move back into space where her original love lay; both the love of career as well as David. While it was a new and fresh start; she knew the memory of David would follow her like a shadow where ever she went but what mattered was moving forward. David would never have wanted her to give up everything just because of him. The USS Venture would allow her a chance to take all she had learned over the last year and to continue with rebuilding her life and finding a way to live each day without David psychically there. |
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| Service Record | 2361 - Admitted to Starfleet Academy 2361 - 2362 - Cadet Freshman - General Studies - Starfleet Academy (San Francisco Campus). 2362-2363 - Cadet Sophomore - Basic Medical Studies - Starfleet Academy (San Francisco Campus). 2363-2364 - Cadet Junior - Intermediate Medical Studies - Starfleet Academy (San Francisco Campus). 2364-2365 - Cadet Senior - Advanced Medical Studies - Starfleet Academy (San Francisco Campus). 2365 - Graduated Starfleet Academy with the rank of Ensign and entered into internship. 2365-2369 - Ensign - Medical Officer - Camp on Palora. 2369 - Completed internship and promoted to Lieutenant JG 2369-2371 - Lieutenant Junior Grade - Medical Doctor - Camp on Palora 2371 - Married David Richardson 2372 - Promoted to Lieutenant 2372-2374 – Lieutenant- Assistant Chief Medical Officer - Camp on Palora 2374 - Redeployed to the USS Nightingale 2374 - David Died 2374-2375 - Emergency Medical Physician - USS Nightingale 2375-2376 - Leave of absence from Starfleet 2375 - 2376 - Undertook further education in psychology in order to change major from emergency medicine to clinical counselling, minoring in diplomacy. 2376 - Reassigned to the USS Venture 2376 - Current - Chief Counsellor - USS Venture |